


A Glance from Your Eyes

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: The Thin Red Line (1998)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Introspection, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-11-13
Updated: 2001-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-05 06:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5365175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Witt's death, Welsh looks back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Glance from Your Eyes

 

> "A glance from your eyes and my life will be yours."  
>  Sergeant Welsh, _The Thin Red Line_

 

I've seen so much in my life, I didn't think there was anything that could still shake me. I didn't think anything could really move me anymore, that there was anything that could make me cry.

Your death did.

Somehow, deep inside, I knew it would have to happen the way it ultimately did. That in the end, it would be your idealism, your damn naivety, bringing you down. I knew it from the first moment I talked to you, and yet I hoped destiny would prove me wrong. You were the brightest soul I've ever known, and somehow, I hoped for that light inside of you to protect you.

The moment we met, I realized that you were different from the others. Special. I've come to know many young soldiers in the last few years. The sparkle their eyes might have held when they first joined the army, it faded after the first few days of war before eventually dying down completely, being replaced by dullness and resignation – if they lived long enough, that is. You were different. Whatever cruelty and inhumanity you encountered, you still held on to the purity of your soul - the fire in your eyes never burned out. The spark, the light inside you, that managed to reach even the coldest hearts, never faded away, brightening your every second, till the day when you died. And I'm sure, even facing death, there was a smile on your lips.

When I was with you, the dullness that had grasped my heart after seeing so much death and mutilation, so much terror and destruction, so much coldness and pain – in your presence, this dullness melted.

I remember our last conversation, those final words you told me: _"I still see a spark in you."_

Did you? Really?

If there ever was, your death destroyed it. There's nothing to fight for anymore, nothing to venture, nothing to gain. Without you, life is dull, gray, hollow - an endless tunnel of darkness without a shimmer of light.

Sometimes, I wonder, though ... whether things would have been different if we had met under different circumstances. With no war surrounding us, less cynicism on my part, in a world that hadn't lost it's beauty and innocence. What could we have been, then? Here and now, in this hard and cold world, we tentatively became friends. We couldn't have been more different – the trouble maker and the hard-liner, the dreamer and the cynic – yet we managed to build what, given enough time, could have become a solid friendship.

Would things between us have been different if we had lived in a friendlier world instead of this cruel, inhuman place? Would there have been more than friendship between us? I'll never find out.

Are you somewhere out there, Witt?

If you are, let me tell you: I miss you.

End.


End file.
